


an excellent father

by threefundamentaltruths



Series: an excellent father [2]
Category: Bridgerton (TV), Bridgerton Series - Julia Quinn
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Family Dynamics, Pregnancy, Starting A Family
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-19 07:20:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29622630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/threefundamentaltruths/pseuds/threefundamentaltruths
Summary: "Penelope knows that the sudden loss of Lord Bridgerton was quite painful. But she has heard all of Colin’s siblings – save Gregory, who is too young to remember him, and Hyacinth, who never knew him – at least refer to their father in passing when recalling childhood memories and even Eloise, who stood witness to his untimely death, speaks warmly and fondly of him.It’s hardly the first time she’s wondered why Colin never mentions his father."Wherein their impending arrival reignites Penelope's interest in a topic Colin has always seemed to avoid.
Relationships: Anthony Bridgerton & Penelope Featherington, Anthony Bridgerton/Kate Sheffield, Colin Bridgerton/Penelope Featherington, Edmund Bridgerton/Violet Bridgerton, Eloise Bridgerton & Penelope Featherington, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Violet Bridgerton & Penelope Featherington
Series: an excellent father [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2176491
Comments: 40
Kudos: 205





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> This idea came from a few different pieces of information and observations from across the series (to be laid out in the end notes of the third part).
> 
> Spoilers for the Bridgerton series generally, but particularly _Romancing Mr. Bridgerton_ and the _Violet in Bloom_ novella, and sort of for _First Comes Scandal_. 
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr at [your3fundamentaltruths](https://your3fundamentaltruths.tumblr.com)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “He was confident. Always completely comfortable in his own skin and it was . . . contagious, I suppose. He always knew what to say, how to make others feel the same. He put me at ease from the very moment we spoke. I was never the same.” 
> 
> The description is so familiar it gives Penelope goosebumps. Hasn’t she wondered often enough if part of the reason she loves Colin so well is that he makes her feel comfortable with herself?
> 
> “He had this way of looking at you, of speaking, as if you were the only person in the room,” Violet continues. “You’d think it impossible with so many children, but it’s true. He – he truly was an excellent father. The best I could have wished for them.”

_1824 – Kent_

“I’ve always admired this painting,” Penelope tells her mother-in-law, eying the Fragonard the late viscount had gifted his wife on her thirtieth birthday.

Smiling slightly, Violet turns away to look at Penelope. “It was a gift from my husband.”

_I know_ , she refrains from saying. “Could you tell me about him?” she asks instead. She knows, objectively, that she is speaking quietly, but her voice feels very loud in the corridor outside the rose salon.

Violet tilts her head thoughtfully, but says nothing.

“I know, of course, that he was very important to all of you and – and missed to this very day,” she continues awkwardly.

Her eyes misting slightly, Violet nods.

She doesn’t blurt out what’s been on her mind nearly from the moment they arrived at Aubrey Hall, but it’s a near thing. “Colin never talks about him, you see –”

Penelope knows that the sudden loss of Lord Bridgerton was quite painful. But she has heard all of Colin’s siblings – save Gregory, who is too young to remember him, and Hyacinth, who never knew him – at least refer to their father in passing when recalling childhood memories and even Eloise, who stood witness to his untimely death, speaks warmly and fondly of him.

It’s hardly the first time she’s wondered why Colin never mentions his father. She had noticed the omission long before they were truly close but long after she’d begun to pay him far too much mind because she’d fallen headlong into love.

No, no – in truth, it’s more than an omission. He had been downright uncomfortable when his aunt had made the briefest mention of his father at their wedding supper.

Colin and Eloise had been in the midst of some very Bridgerton bickering. Something about who their aunt and uncle’s favorite was . . .

\---

_1824 – London_

Colin shrugs, with one of his typical impish smiles, before fixing his attention back on Eloise. “The truth is, I don’t know why you bother asking; we all know it’s me.”

“It most certainly is not,” Dr. Rokesby mutters, before cutting an apologetic look at Penelope.

She shakes her head and waves a careless hand, hoping it conveys _no offense taken_.

“Yes, yes, we all know the truth, darling,” Aunt Georgie – she’d immediately insisted that Penelope must call her Aunt Georgie – whispers placatingly. “Just don’t tell _them_.”

“I am very fond of Eloise,” Dr. Rokesby says with a touch of indignation. Eloise _is_ their goddaughter, after all.

Penelope stifles a laugh. “But not Colin?”

“Oh, certainly he is,” Aunt Georgie says dismissively. “How could he not be? It’s simply that he’s immune to Colin’s tender charms.”

She finds her brows rising of their own volition. “I didn’t think such a thing possible.”

“One should hope you wouldn’t,” Dr. Rokesby says dryly.

“I’m told growing up with my brother was quite the inoculation,” Aunt Georgie explains. Ah, yes, Eloise had also mentioned Dr. Rokesby was her father’s very best friend from boyhood.

Dr. Rokesby nods. “It certainly was.”

“Pity it didn’t work half so well on me.”

Eloise, not paying the supposed subjects of their conversation the slightest mind, is still preoccupied scoffing at Colin. “Oh ho-ho, I beg to differ, dear brother –”

Aunt Georgie only shakes her head, laughing too, and lets the Bridgerton bickering carry on as she tells Penelope that she’d known what matter of man her nephew would grow up to be when he was a mere babe in arms. Unlike her husband, she was utterly helpless. “He was just adorable, smiling before any child had a right to. I knew he was going to be a charmer.”

“He can talk his way out of anything.” She grins, giving Colin an affectionate look that he returns, finally distracted from his sibling squabble with Eloise, before adding conspiratorially to Aunt Georgie, “I do believe he could get away with murder if he felt so inclined.”

“Yes, he’s truly his father’s son.” Aunt Georgie’s tone is slightly wistful, but she’s still smiling.

With her hand still tucked into the crook of Colin’s elbow, she can’t help but notice the way he stiffens. She looks at him again as soon as she feels the change, but he is gazing determinedly at a point just beyond his aunt’s shoulder. How odd.

Aunt Georgie huffs a breath. “It was really so unfair, you know. If I’d gotten into half so many misadventures –”

Colin blinks and gives his aunt a dubious look before allowing his great, big, friendly, slightly mischievous smile to overtake his face as if he hadn’t been the slightest bit discomposed moments earlier. “Is one really a Bridgerton if one doesn’t get into as many misadventures as one can?”

\---

_1824 – Kent_

And now – well, she hasn’t been able to stop thinking about it since they arrived yesterday.

Violet looks genuinely surprised. “Never?”

She nods. “Eloise, on the other hand . . .” She trails off and the silence stretches uncomfortably. She can _see_ her mother-in-law thinking.

“You’re right,” Violet finally says, shaking her head in disbelief. “I hadn’t noticed. How did I not notice?” She mutters the second part to herself, nearly under her breath.

“You’re only human,” Penelope says gently. And Colin is quite adept at the sorts of evasive maneuvers that ensure people only see what he wishes to share of himself.

Violet, it is apparent, isn’t quite prepared to excuse the lapse in her maternal discernment. “I pride myself on knowing my children better than anyone and yet I never noticed.” She shakes her head, smiling ruefully. “No wonder you were such a success as Whistledown.”

She gives the tiniest self-deprecating shrug. “I’d like to accept the compliment to my prowess, but I think it’s less my keen powers of observation and more the fact that I’ve been rather ridiculously in love with your son for so long.”

“You know, I did try to get him to see the error of his ways long before he actually did, but hard-headed as he is, he had to figure it out on his own, in his own time.”

She hadn’t _just_ been trying to make her walk home with Anthony as minimally excruciating as possible all those years ago; she truly had suspected there was something more to Colin’s uncharacteristically vehement pronouncement, but she’d never dream of telling Violet the unintended consequences of her well-meaning prodding. It had all turned out right in the end, after all.

“That doesn’t surprise me. You’ve always seen me in a way that others didn’t.” Only Lady Danbury and Eloise. “It’s always meant so much to me.” She reaches out to squeeze Violet’s hand in a silent _thank you_. “But he just wasn’t ready. And perhaps I wasn’t either,” she adds thoughtfully. “Long in the tooth as I was,” she finishes with a wry twist to her smile.

That makes Violet laugh before lapsing into a surprisingly comfortable silence, considering that her question remains unanswered, until Violet says, rather abruptly, “I was a wallflower, too, you know.”

“I couldn’t imagine someone as well-liked and lovely and _nice_ as you ever having been a wallflower,” she says truthfully.

Violet blushes, ever-so-slightly.

“But I did suspect,” she admits.

Well, she’s done more than suspect. Lately, when she gets distracted from her principal project – editing Colin’s travel journals, which, delightful as they are, are not nearly so fun to edit as they are to read purely for the pleasure of enjoying his words – her mind wanders to original ideas of her own.

Slowly, a novel is taking shape in the back of her mind and in the page or two of ideas she’s scribbled down and stuck in the back of a desk drawer in her small office. The clearest picture she can see is one of the characters – not the heroine, but a very important character nevertheless: a clever, attractive, popular ton hostess who makes a point of being kindest to the shyest debutantes because she herself remembers what it was like to be a wallflower. Her mother-in-law is the obvious inspiration, but the woman she imagines also has a rather generous dash of Lady Danbury’s acerbic wit as the finishing touch. For now, she calls the character Lady Bridgebury after the two ladies she admires most because she finds it bloody difficult to name her. Perhaps Lady _Ridge_ bury so it’s not _quite_ so obvious . . .

“You were so obviously sympathetic to us.”

“I know that it isn’t easy to stand at the fringes of the ballroom and pretend one doesn’t want to dance. Especially when one is, in fact, a fairly good dancer,” Violet adds knowingly.

She grins.

Violet chews on her lip for a moment. “That’s what I was doing when I met Edmund,” she finally says. “Well, I’d met him before, when we were children and he was visiting my neighbor. He was a horrid boy,” Violet adds with great feeling.

Her eyes widen. “I beg your pardon?”

“A horrid boy,” Violet insists. “He _flour-bombed_ me! But, somehow, I forgot him in time. Yet he remembered me,” she continues with no small amount of satisfaction before laughing. “But then, he never forgot a face. A great trick, that. Of course, I could never forget the look of him after eight children who so resemble him.”

“Quite handsome, then, I take it,” she says cheekily.

“I am biased, of course.” Then Violet turns serious again. “But that was the least of it. He was confident. Always completely comfortable in his own skin and it was . . . contagious, I suppose. He always knew what to say, how to make others feel the same. He put me at ease from the very moment we spoke. I was never the same.”

The description is so familiar it gives her goosebumps. Hasn’t she wondered often enough if part of the reason she loves Colin so well is that he makes her feel comfortable with herself?

“He had this way of looking at you, of speaking, as if you were the only person in the room,” Violet continues. “You’d think it impossible with so many children, but it’s true. He truly was an excellent father. The best I could have wished for them.”

“No wonder they turned out so well, with you for a mother and him for a father.”

Violet smiles softly. “That’s very sweet of you.”

“And true.”

“He would’ve liked you, you know,” Violet says suddenly. “For all the reasons I’ve always done – he was a good judge of character –”

She blushes. “Thank you –”

Violet waves away her thanks, her eyes twinkling with laughter. “But also because it would’ve tickled him to bits to have the infamous Lady Whistledown for his daughter. Oh, having the family in the column every other week would’ve annoyed him as much as the rest of us, to be sure –”

She gives Violet a sheepish smile at that, knowing even as she does that it wouldn’t get her out of trouble like her husband’s adorably sheepish (sheepishly adorable?) looks do if Violet were truly cross with her. She’s very glad that Violet has had enough time to come to terms with her secret life that she can joke about it so easily.

“– But the man had mischief in every inch of his soul and he would’ve appreciated the sheer ingenuity it took to fool the whole of society for so many years. He liked nothing better than a good laugh.” Then Violet turns thoughtful again. Still smiling, but more thoughtful. “He had the very best laugh, you know. Just hearing it could warm a body from the inside out. And when he smiled, you wanted to do nothing more than smile back. Even when he crossed you. He’d just smile and look contrite and say something amusing and you’d laugh and forget why you were angry in the first place. The truth is . . .” She pauses for a long moment before finishing the thought. “While Benedict looks most like him – it is a breathtaking resemblance – Colin _is_ very like him. The most of all our children.”

“I know.” To her surprise, her mother-in-law doesn’t question her strange statement, but she still feels a need to explain herself. “The way you described him, the way you described how you felt about him – I understood perfectly.” She clears her throat delicately. “But I do find it surprising. I suppose I would’ve imagined Lord Bridgerton to have been rather more like Anthony.”

“They were very close, but Anthony is not the same man his father was. He had to grow up very fast.” Something sad passes over Violet’s eyes. “But it was more than that. My husband and I were married young and were young parents, after all.”

She understands. Lord and Lady Bridgerton had chosen their path; Anthony had been thrust into his by a _bee_.

(Twice. Good heavens.)

“And he was not just the eldest son and heir – not that we gave a fig about that, we would’ve been equally happy with a girl,” Violet adds, as if Penelope would think badly of her otherwise. “But our firstborn. Whilst Edmund was the long-awaited son, with his older sister playing the part rather well until he grew up some and she felt she could turn her attention to her father-in-law’s holdings. It was . . .” She shrugs delicately. “Different. And so Edmund was different.”

Anthony is the only Viscount Bridgerton she has ever known and he is the consummate proud nobleman. She still can’t quite picture a Lord Bridgerton in Colin’s mold.

“His portrait is over the fireplace in Anthony’s study, if you should care to see it.”

She clears her throat. “Yes, of course,” she says awkwardly. “Thank you. I think I wo–”

Violet interrupts, “What made you ask about him?”

“I was curious.”

“Whatever they say otherwise, there is usually a reason my children suddenly ask unexpected questions.”

She continues to be touched at the sincere expansiveness of Violet’s definition of children. There has never been a more motherly mother-in-law, she is sure of it. “I am perhaps a bit maudlin of late,” she finally says, managing both to evade and answer the question as her mother-in-law’s eyes grow wide and her smile wider.

It is apparent that it takes all of Violet Bridgerton’s considerable self-control not to clap her hands together with glee. “How wonderful!”

\---

When Penelope retires that night, she is both exhausted and enlivened by the enthusiasm with which their news was met.

She’s sitting up against her pillows, tired but too happy to sleep.

Colin, lying beside her, braces himself on his forearms and turns his head left to look up at her. He has not ceased smiling all evening.

She leans down to kiss him, but in a fit of whimsy, drops a kiss on his nose instead of pressing her lips to his.

He closes his eyes and wrinkles his nose in surprise, putting her in mind of her long-ago cat as a kitten –

The expression is so utterly, ridiculously adorable – a man of three-and-thirty, _adorable_ – that she giggles.

His scrunched-closed eyes fly open at that. “I beg your pardon?”

She shakes her head, trying to fight off the giggle.

“Oh, come now, Penelope,” Colin insists in his best persuasive tone. “You can’t leave me in suspense like that.”

There’s something lovely in the way his voice wraps around the syllables of her name. It’s loving and warm, laced with affection and ease and a little bit of awe. Even when he’s teasing. Perhaps especially when he’s teasing.

She shakes her head, still fighting laughter, and idly traces the handful of freckles across his broad shoulders. She’d not expected them, having always assumed freckles only appeared on one’s face; it was the only place _she_ had them and the only area she’d ever been warned to protect to avoid them. More than warned. Before she’d finally crossed the line between debutante and spinster, her mother had frequently fussed at her about bonnets and parasols, sure that her red hair portended even more freckles to come, which would render her utterly unmarriageable, if she was not ever-vigilant against the sun.

Colin shivers in a promising sort of way, now looking rather like a cat in cream, but the motion draws her attention to the thin white line on his left shoulder blade.

She noticed it a few days into their marriage, during one of the precious few mornings they had lazed away in bed before resuming their normal commitments. Observant though she is, she might not have noticed it at all but for the fact that Colin was still quite tanned from Cyprus – and mostly she was titillated, wondering what exactly he’d been doing there that the tan extended to places even a man would never ordinarily expose to the sun. Perhaps they should go there for their honeymoon trip, she had thought wickedly to herself.

It is even less noticeable now that his tan has long since faded, but her curiosity remains. “How did you get this?” she asks softly, running a feather-light finger along the faded scar because she knows he can’t see it.

“Childhood misadventure _,_ ” he says lightly, but he isn’t smiling anymore.

She lifts her fingers from his skin as if scalded. “Oh,” she says, a bit disappointed at the lack of detail and stung by the abrupt shift in his mood. 

He takes the opportunity to roll over onto his back and push himself up to sit back against his own pillows.

“I suppose we will need to make sure to avoid such . . . childhood misadventures,” she ventures tentatively when the silence begins to grate on her, placing a protective hand on her belly.

“Yes,” Colin says quietly, covering her hand with his. “Yes, we certainly will.”


	2. Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “He was truly the best of men. The very best father a child could have wished.”
> 
> The words echo Violet's so clearly it's as if they're reading from the same text.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who haven’t seen it, I posted separately an outtake from Part 1: _[an excellent father - an outtake](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29623113)_.

The following afternoon, Penelope finds herself standing in Anthony’s study, looking contemplatively up at the late viscount’s portrait over the fireplace. She had walked down the hall, fully intending to knock and ask for admittance, but the door was wide open, so she let herself in. It wasn’t very well done of her, of course, and one would think she had learned her lesson about such intrusions, but her impatience got the better of her.

At first glance, the portrait is exactly the same as all the other paintings of wealthy noblemen she’s seen in her many years out in society: a serious, consummate aristocrat’s face befitting a peer of the realm.

But there’s more to it than that. She could indeed be looking at Benedict but for the subtlest differences that tell her the portrait must be _very_ like indeed. The artist was clearly quite skilled, as he managed both to produce a traditional aristocratic portrait and convey the sitter’s personality: there is the slightest hint of mischief in the warm dark eyes that crinkle at the edges and the just-barely upturned corners of the lips, something inexplicably merry about the tilt of the proud head. In those small details is conveyed so much of the man, dead over two decades, that his widow described so lovingly just yesterday morning.

Truthfully, it seems rather selfish of her brother-in-law to keep the portrait in his private office. Not that she’d ever dream of saying such a thing to anyone. In so many other ways, Anthony is utterly selfless, his devotion to his family first and foremost. Who is she to judge him for a singular lapse in that generosity of spirit?

She hears a throat clear behind her. _Oh, dash it all._ She turns, embarrassed to be caught invading Anthony’s private sanctuary, an apology tumbling off her lips. “I’m sorry, I –”

“It’s quite all right,” Anthony interrupts.

She breathes a sigh of relief at the sincerity in his eyes, that he truly isn’t irritated with her even though he has every right to be. “Your mother and I spoke about the late viscount yesterday. She said his portrait was in here and I –”

He nods. “Of course. I’ve found myself looking up at him a great many times as well. He was the greatest influence on my life. So naturally I have given him quite a lot of thought over the years.” He shrugs, a hint of a smile on his lips. “It’s not terribly hard to guess why you’re giving him thought now.”

She blushes; she can’t help it.

“He was truly the best of men. The very best father a child could have wished.”

The words echo Violet's so clearly it's as if they're reading from the same text.

“He was so engaged in our lives. Not like my friends’ fathers. Frankly, not like any other father I’d ever met. Losing that, losing _him_ wasn’t easy,” Anthony goes on with uncharacteristic openness.

For him most of all, surely. Having not only to mourn a most beloved father but also to step into his shoes and all his responsibilities long before he was ready.

“For any of us.”

She tilts her head sympathetically, wanting to show she is listening and understanding, but not wanting to interrupt and cut off Anthony's candor.

“For years, we avoided spending any significant time in the country because his memory is so much more real here.”

She reconsiders her earlier assessment. Perhaps that is the reason the late viscount's portrait is here rather than in a public area of the house. “I see,” she says rather uselessly, feeling a need to say _something_ , but not quite knowing what would be appropriate. Her father passed years ago, but that is only a fact of life to her, not the gentle but ever-present ache that the loss of their patriarch seems to remain for her new family.

“I’ve grown to embrace that rather than avoid it, but that wasn’t always the case.”

“It’s still not the case for Colin,” she says quietly, the words slipping out unthinkingly, for all that she's been having such a hard time coming up with anything to say at all. “He’s never said a word to me about him,” she adds by way of explanation.

  
Unlike Violet, Anthony doesn’t look surprised. “And he has quite the gift for evasive conversational maneuvers, doesn’t he?”

It’s phrased as a question, but it isn’t. They both know Colin too well for that.

“I rarely used to talk about Father myself. But then –” Something changes in his face. “There was Kate. She would not let me escape her questions and eventually I spoke to her of things I’d never told another soul. It was freeing.”

“I can imagine,” she murmurs.

“Yes, I suppose you know more than most of us about the keeping of secrets,” he says dryly before carrying on thoughtfully. “I have tried very hard to live up to our father’s example. But I thought for a very long time that there was no way I could. I’ve learned better. In no small part thanks to my wife.” He gives her a wry smile. “I need not be just like him to care well for the family. And the truth is,” he continues very gravely, as if imparting a very great secret, “that I am a touch too stern to be just like him, anyway.”

She doesn’t agree or disagree aloud, but she suspects the twitch of her lips before she turns serious again gives her away. “Your mother said that Colin is very like him.”

Slowly, Anthony nods. “Yes. Certainly in temperament. And other ways, I think. Father was also a great deal more perceptive than he liked to let on,” he muses. “It’s a useful thing, you know. Your children will be very lucky to have him.”

“I know,” she says, and she means it with all her heart.

“And you, of course. As he is to have you.”

She feels a bit misty, but she only teases, “You really are much nicer than you like to let on, you know.”

Anthony glares at her, ears faintly pink, but there’s no real heat in it.

“Not when it comes to Pall Mall, of course,” she adds placatingly. Or so she is told. She has yet to witness his alleged ferocity for herself, but it seems so very much in keeping with his character that she has no difficulty believing it to be true.

“What sort of Bridgerton would I be if I were?” he asks with a shudder and the _most_ disgusted look on his face at the mere thought of such weakness.

At that, she does laugh out loud. She simply can’t help it.

\---

“I had a nice conversation with Anthony earlier,” she says quietly as she lays in bed that night, curled up against Colin who, for once, had not fallen asleep on her as soon as his head hit the pillow.

“Oh?” Colin asks sleepily. He sounds as tired as she feels. Not surprising, between his usual horseplay with their nieces and nephews and the fact that he and Gregory took advantage of the unusually fine weather to take the older ones on a hike earlier in the day. Their nieces and nephews can be very demanding.  
  


(They’re very lucky they’re also such darlings.)

“About your father.” _And you_ , she doesn’t add. She can’t quite say why. 

Half on top of him as she is, she can feel him tense beneath her. “About my father?” he echoes.

She nods. “He sounded like a wonderful man. And an excellent father.”

“He was –” Colin clears his throat, but the few words are still a touch strangled and his heart beats far too fast beneath her ear. “The very best.”

She lifts her head, tracing gentle patterns on his chest, over his racing heart, carefully scrutinizing his face as she hesitates over her words.

It is the oddest thing, surely some strange trick of the firelight, but she’d swear Colin’s eyes look rather . . . cold.

No, not just cold. Shuttered. Flat. Looking at him just then takes her back to their engagement, to the first weeks of their marriage, before he brought himself to tell her the entire truth about why Whistledown bothered him so.

Colin tends to close himself off when he is dealing with emotions outside his usual range, with things that discomfit him. He is so rarely uncomfortable that he does not know what to do with himself when he _is_.

But why?

Likely the same fear that dogged his eldest brother: the simple, painful fear of not living up to their beloved father. So she tells him softly, “Anthony thinks you will be, too, you know. I quite agree.”

Still –

Even though the words are entirely true, even though Colin’s heart slows from a gallop to its usual comforting thump beneath her hand as her words linger between them, she still finds she has disappointed herself by pulling back from the precipice. But there is something in her that hesitates to push him further just yet.

“I hope so,” Colin murmurs at last, the strange chill in his eyes melting as he raises a hand to stroke gently through her hair.

“I know so,” she says drowsily, limbs loosening as his ministrations lull her to sleep.


	3. Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Is _Colin_ being terribly annoying?” Eloise guesses again with a hint of mischief in her eyes.
> 
> “No, just . . .” She struggles to come up with the right words for it. “Strange, I suppose.”

“You could trip and fall,” Colin says earnestly when Penelope falls into step with him as their older nieces and nephews run out for a game of blind man’s bluff the following afternoon.

“I could just watch,” she suggests very reasonably.

“It’s cold. You might catch a chill.”

“But it’s all right for the children to catch a chill?” she retorts at that. She can’t resist.

“They’ll be running about.”

She pouts.

“Humor me?” he pleads, lips quirking in that way that makes her heart squeeze with affection.

“Colin,” she sighs.

“Pen,” he says affectionately, looking down at her with so much love that she blushes.

She’ll have to stop blushing someday, won’t she? 

\---

She sighs deeply as she watches Colin through the window with the children. It’s his turn to be the blind man and, for a Bridgerton, he’s being an unusually good sport about the fact that his brothers, already out, are deliberately being excessively noisy from the sidelines in order to confuse him. It’s very sweet.

How is it possible for her to fall even deeper over the littlest things? It’s like her heart grows every day to make room for more love for him. It’s mad and wonderful and –

She nearly jumps when she hears Eloise come up behind her, startling her out of her reverie.

“Sounds serious.” Uncharacteristically, Eloise’s face folds with concern. “Are you quite all right, Pen?” she asks solicitously.

“I feel fine, you mother hen,” she says peevishly. The way this family acts sometimes, you’d think no one had ever had a baby before. She really should’ve been more sympathetic when it was Sophie sighing about their henpecking.

“Then what’s the matter? Because obviously something is. I’ve not been your best friend for a decade for nothing, you know.”

“Something’s been bothering me,” she admits, although, truthfully, she’d forgotten it as she contemplated her ever-deepening love for her husband.

“Besides our mad family, you mean?” Eloise says with that wry quirk of the lips that always reminds her so endearingly of Colin and in him of Eloise.

“It’s about the family, I suppose.”

“Oh? Are we being terribly annoying?”

She shakes her head with a faint smile. "Only a little."

“Is _Colin_ being terribly annoying?” Eloise guesses again with a hint of mischief in her eyes.

“No, just . . .” She struggles to come up with the right words for it. “Strange, I suppose.”

“You’re only just realizing?”

“El,” she sighs.

“I’m sorry, I’ll be serious,” Eloise promises, squeezing her hands. “But let’s sit, or I’ll have to hear him drone on about how the point of you staying inside was not overexerting yourself or some such nonsense.” She rolls her eyes and Penelope loves her for it.

When they’re seated, Eloise having pulled out her not-so-secret stash of candy (one of several she's strategically hidden around Aubrey Hall since her arrival) and given a sad little sigh at its nearly depleted state before they both dig in, Penelope tries to start again. “Do you remember our wedding supper?”

Eloise nods slowly.

“When you introduced me to your Aunt Georgie and Uncle Nicholas?”

Eloise nods again.

“At one point, Aunt Georgie said something to the effect of . . . I think she said Colin was truly your father’s son and he was just . . . well, he froze. Went completely stiff. It was the strangest thing. And he’s never said a word to me about him. I practically had to pry something out of him last night – and that only got me some vague generality about how your father was the very best. It seems a sore subject and I haven’t the least idea why.”

“You really are terribly observant,” Eloise says with a faint note of wonder in her voice. “I hadn’t noticed.”

“I’m terribly besotted,” she corrects.

“That too,” Eloise agrees.

"I noticed ages ago, but I've wondered lately, with –”

“The baby. Of course.” Eloise nods understandingly. “Unfortunately, for once in my life, I can’t say I know anything of use. And you know Colin . . . he’ll only say or do a thing when he’s good and ready, likely long past the time any reasonable person would be, as you _well_ know,” she adds meaningfully.

And then he’ll rush in headfirst once he is.

“Rather like you,” Penelope observes dryly.

“Rather like me,” Eloise agrees with remarkable good grace. “But I’m sure he will. In fact, someday, he’ll probably talk your ear off so that you’ll beg never to hear another word about our father as long as you live.”

She gives Eloise a dubious look. “Now that I doubt.”

Eloise scoffs. “True. Difficult as I find it to believe that anyone could enjoy the company of one of my brothers that much, you’ll never be bored of him, will you? Silly smitten creature that you are, you’d probably be in raptures listening to Colin read from _Debrett’s_.”

She rolls her eyes. As if Eloise, who wouldn’t know a healing herb from a poisonous plant, hasn’t readily admitted to spending unreasonable amounts of time in her husband’s greenhouse.

“Anyway, all that to say that perhaps you needn’t push.”

“You, counseling patience?” she asks, her aghast look only half-joking. “Failing your possessing some secret knowledge, I thought you’d surely tell me to badger him to distraction.”

“I know, I know. I stole the advice from Mother. The only useful thing she told me on my wedding night, to be quite honest." 

" _Eloise_ ," she laughs.

"I didn't mean like _that,_ " Eloise says primly, but her eyes twinkle. "And in all seriousness, it’s worked well for me. When appropriate,” she adds quickly.

She can’t help but smile. Marriage _has_ changed her best friend at least a little bit, even if she is still the same irrepressible Eloise in all the best ways. And perhaps she is right. She frowns. Speaking of being the same irrepressible Eloise . . . Eloise has always jumped right into the fray. She looks at her best friend again through narrowed eyes. “By the by, why are you inside with me instead of outside with the rest of them?”

“I hardly get to spend time with my best friend now that I live in Gloucestershire and she still resides primarily in London?”

She regards Eloise dubiously. “Try again.”

“I was having a nap.”

“That doesn’t preclude you from going outside _now_.”

Eloise smiles and she knows. “I want you to remember that _I_ told _you_ first,” she sniffs.

“You didn’t tell me; I guessed!” she protests before throwing her arms around Eloise.

“I was going to tell you!” Eloise insists when she finally lets her go. “It’s not my fault you’re clever.”

“I don’t know that I’m so very clever; perhaps it’s just that you Bridgertons are easy to read once one knows you well enough.”

“We Bridgertons,” Eloise reminds her.

“Well, _we_ Bridgertons shall have to visit regularly.”

“We will,” Eloise promises.

She sighs, feeling a little teary. “It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? This time last year, we were both quite sure we’d remain spinsters -" Goodness, Christmas at Philippa's had been nothing like an Aubrey Hall holiday - for starters, one wouldn't arrive weeks prior to the holiday, not least because one certainly wouldn't want to. Both she and Colin are in firm agreement that they will never spend the holidays with her family.

Truth be told, holidays with her family could very well end in a homicide (her mother's) and a hanging for said homicide (her husband's) if Mama were more careless with her feelings than Colin could handle.

“An understatement if there ever was one,” Eloise says, shaking her head with an affected sigh. “I am quite sure Mother is still thanking her lucky stars daily.” But Penelope can see that she’s just a bit teary, too.

“Girls?” says Violet suspiciously as she comes in, looking rather peckish. (They will always be girls to Violet, she supposes.) It must be nearly time for tea. 

Eloise smiles in that same way she did a few minutes ago and Violet gasps and rushes over.

\---

Violet is still in raptures by the time the others start to trickle in for tea ( _three this year and already two the next!_ ) _,_ so of course everyone knows instantly what the news is and tea is just as raucous an affair as dinner was two nights ago. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So a question on the outtake made me think a bit more about my handwave-y timeline and made me realize it was more likely to be late than early fall and could very well be late November or December, so I changed the taking the niblings out swimming to taking them hiking.


End file.
